Mortal Kombat, the super franchise from way back in the day looked to be on a steady downfall at one point but was quickly redeemed with the release of the successful and acclaimed Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance in 2002. Two years later, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon and co bring us the next instalment of the classic series that promises to feature every character from MK's past somewhere in the game. And it does; Deception is a complete trip of nostalgia that will take any classic Mortal Kombat fan back to arguably the best game in the series, Mortal Kombat 2.

While some say stories don't mean much in fighting games, Ed Boon and the MK team obviously disagree. Deception's story is very deep, starting with the spectacular introduction movie setting the stage for us and following with a single-player RPG-like story mode that can take more time to complete than Fable. Mortal Kombat's story is deeper than it appears and there is always a lot more going on than meets the eye. In fact, out of all the fighting games around, I consider Deception to have the best and most detailed story, spending countless hours just reading up and studying on it. Whilst the premise may appear thin, it's only because you have to do a lot of digging to really understand everything that is going on. Plenty of secrets and long-unanswered questions will finally be revealed in Deception.

The game tells the story first of all by sending us back in time with Konquest mode, where you start off with a young boy named Shujinko. His dreams were always to compete in Mortal Kombat and defeat Shang Tsung, following in the footsteps of his hero, Kung Lao. Suddenly the boy is chosen to be the champion of the elder gods by a being known as Damashi and is sent off on a lifelong journey to collect six ancient artefacts before a greater evil finds them, thus preventing the realms from being merged and ruled by one evil force. Whilst the story can be confusing at times and bits of the Konquest mode don't make a lot of sense, there are some really enjoyable twists and it is worth playing through, if only once.

Konquest mode ends where the traditional arcade mode begins; as the opening movie shows, a great evil known as Onaga, the Dragon King, has returned in Reptile's evolved body and is threatening the realms. The arcade mode is the same as it has always been in Mortal Kombat; you select a fighter and progress up a ladder of challengers, finally confronting the main boss and you're rewarded with a brief ending sequence once defeated. Unfortunately the endings aren't full-motion video as they were in previous instalments, but only still images with voices overlapping.

Let's not get too ahead of ourselves here though. First of all, the menus in Deception are very basic but look great; ambient music, eerie background and a random character on the right side with videos of the highlighted mode playing in the clouds within the sky. You're going to see a plethora of areas listed here as well including Kombat, Konquest, Kontent, The Krypt, Puzzle Kombat, Chess Kombat, options and finally profiles. Deception's profile system works quite well, as characters are unlocked for every profile but stats are kept for each individual one, as well as Shujinko's abilities (more on this later); each profile has a six button code as well, so no pesky little brothers can ruin your stats! This system is great for when you have a lot of buddies over and you can each easily take turns and keep track of individual scores.

The core gameplay of Deception is very similar to Deadly Alliance, with a few modifications made to make it feel more like the classic MK games of yesteryear. Each fighter still has two fighting styles and a weapon style but the classic uppercuts from the first four MK games are back with a vengeance. The various styles in MK are varied and unique to each warrior (though some Deadly Alliance fighters absent from this game have given up their styles to new warriors) and you can even string together huge combos that flow from style to style. Each fighter has four or five different special attacks and most of them are very similar to those of the classic games. In fact, some characters have nothing but their original moves and feel like direct translations from 2D to 3D. The run button is absent, although there is an unblockable grab attack to make up for it. Each fighter now has two fatality attacks, some of which are quite cool while others are a bit dull; however you also have the ability to perform a Hara-Kiri, otherwise known as brutally killing yourself. Why? Well, if you lose the match, you know how humiliating it can sometimes be to have a fatality performed against you so it's your chance to gloat and keep that final shred of dignity you may have left!

One thing to keep in mind is that this game is not Virtua Fighter or Tekken. It's not as realistic, obviously, and not a true simulation of martial arts combat. Many fans of those previously mentioned titles may be turned off by the spear throwing and lightning-tossing nature of this game but that's what it's all about and always has been. Deception does a great job of bringing back memories of the classic game in numerous ways. For one, many characters who haven't been properly heard from in quite sometime have returned, such as Baraka, Millena, Kabal, Nightwolf, Sindel, Liu Kang and others. Secondly, at some point in the game you will see every single Mortal Kombat character, ever, at least once and this includes the least popular guys from MK4 and the new characters from Deadly Alliance that didn't make it to Deception. Thirdly, you'll unlock plenty of arenas that are straight out of MK's past, such as the Living Forest, Acid Bath, the original Pit, the Portal to Outworld and the very first arena from Mortal Kombat.

Speaking of arenas, this is one area that has really been improved over Deadly Alliance. Almost all of the battlegrounds have some sort of interactive aspect; the tower arena for instance has multiple levels you can fight on and a ledge that opponents can be knocked from at any time in a round. Death traps show up everywhere and each has different and horrific animations and consequences. All the fighting areas are unique and look absolutely fantastic, with backgrounds full of life and things to look at; I'd go into further details about why they're all so great but I'd rather let you discover them for yourself. Just be prepared to be very impressed.

Equally impressive is the designs of the many combatants of Mortal Kombat. In fact, I feel that MK has the very best character designs of all the fighting games. While they may not have been that great in some previous releases, Deadly Alliance and Deception have really stepped up and delivered incredibly unique and great looking characters, each with their own personality, style, look and back-story. Every player in this MK incarnation has some sort of importance to the overall epic storyline, though unfortunately quite a few of the endings are lacking and don't satisfy fans of the storylines at all. Deception also pulled a card out of Capcom's book and tossed in a character that is, in fact, two characters. Noob Saibot and Smoke are one in this game, known as Noob - Smoke. No, there's not some crazy storyline where Noob and Smoke somehow merged, but instead you actually control both by switching between their styles, which instead switches between the two of them. Their moves are very reminiscent of attacks in Marvel vs. Capcom and mastering them will take quite some time.

Remember when MK used to try bizarre, humorous ideas that didn't always go over well? I'm talking about things like animalities, babalities, friendalities, all those crazy ideas that really didn't belong in Mortal Kombat, sort of like making a cartoon MK show for kids that completely destroyed every character's story - it just didn't seem to quite fit. Well, whilst none of that stuff is happening again, Boon and crew have added some puzzling new features that, luckily, are loads of fun.

First off is the puzzle mode, which is obviously a blatant rip-off of Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, right down to the chibi-like MK characters fighting on the bottom of the screen. Nonetheless, the puzzle mode is quite fun and addictive, uncomplicated by intricate special features; just match up colours and place an identically coloured MK symbol on them to cause your pieces to break. Each puzzle version of the fighters also has his own special metre, allowing you to pull off a character specific attack to throw your enemy off balance.

The next new mode is the surprisingly fantastic Chess Kombat, which is essentially Mortal Kombat on a chess board. Not only do you have to battle to take an enemies piece and square but you can also lay traps, find power up spaces and use eight sorcery moves including kill, imprison, teleport, heal, resurrect and more. There are five different classes that move in different ways and you can select a different fighter for all five positions (all positions but the champion have more than one piece on the board as well). There's a surprising amount of strategy and skill involved in this mode, such as the fact that if one of your two sorcerers dies you'll lose half your magic attacks. It's quite compelling and a great distraction if you ever get tired of the normal modes in the game.

The only mode I'm sorry to say I'm disappointed with is arguably the most important: the single player Konquest. It attempts to be a large, open-ended RPG game but basically falls flat on its face. While you can venture over six different realms, you're forced to partake in very dull games of fetch with few battles thrown in between. Some may see this mode as a glorified training mode, as you'll constantly be re-training the same skills with new fighters. You play Shujinko, who has the ability to take on other fighters' styles, which in turn causes him to transform into them as well, thus resulting in you fighting as everybody but Shujinko until the last part of the mode. A whole lot of koins are lying around this mode, as well as chests full of more koins and other hidden secrets. Unfortunately, to get all of the game's other characters and alternate outfits you must find them in this mode and without a guide it will literally take you forever. Some chests containing hidden characters or outfits only show up in a certain area at a certain minute of a certain day of a certain week and they don't stay long. If you don't know where to look you'll be searching for the rest of your life.

The main quests are extremely easy as well, seeing as how there is always a giant marker telling you where to go next and they're all very similar and dull. The side-quests however have no markers but also have no menu to remind you of them. I once talked to a man who gave me a quest but I decided to move onto more important things at the time. I completely forgot about this mission until I accidentally stumbled upon the second part of his quest, but since I had forgotten about it and there was no menu to check and so I had no idea what to do next.

Running around is a chore in itself, even at the incredibly ridiculous looking speeds you can run at and you'll be doing a whole lot of it. That's not the only problem with running either; you'll frequently encounter areas where you think you can run but there's an invisible wall blocking your progress, causing you to run around a patch of bushes or trees to get there. The mode just feels really thrown together and while the story has some nice twists, it's told in a very awkward manner and will most likely bring up more questions than it answers.

Konquest has a couple of redeeming qualities though; for starters it features every MK character of all time in it somewhere, so it's sure to bring back a lot of memories and smiles. It's just cool to run to the Living Forest in Outworld and find Reptile there, or head to Orderrealm to find Fujin and the other gods, or maybe the Netherrealms to encounter the bosses of MK's past like Shinnok and Shang Tsung. Also, upon completion of Konquest you'll be able to use Shujinko in the other modes of gameplay but he's slightly customisable, as to use his special moves and fatalities you'll have to find them in the Konquest mode. Whilst, in the end, everybody's Shujinko will wind up the same (if they go through the trouble of finding the moves), for a while you'll have a Shujinko with Scorpion's spear attack while your online enemy will have one with Sub-Zero's freeze instead. In the end, whilst this Konquest is vastly better than Deadly Alliance's, it is quite dull and repetitive throughout and lasts far too long, which wouldn't be a bad thing if the mode were a little more fun, but it mostly feels like a giant chore.

Also returning from Deadly Alliance, though smaller, is the Krypt. Koins you earn throughout Konquest and Arcade can be used to purchase a coffin with a special surprise in it, such as production art, a movie, bios, alternate outfits and Puzzle characters. Most of the really good stuff however must be unlocked from the Krypt via a key found in Konquest, like most of the characters and their second attires. I'm a huge fan of behind the scenes features and such and I'm in luck because each piece you unlock in the Krypt has a brief description, so all of the things you unlock make cool little factoids. They're also, however, a bit depressing, as you'll see a lot of stuff that was eventually removed from the game that on paper seems like amazingly cool and fun ideas, such as four player combat!

I'll confess, the whole time I've been writing this review I've had to take breaks every five minutes so I can play a few rounds of MK online. I'm addicted and I can't get enough of it; I always find myself going back online to perfect my Nightwolf combos and attacks against real players in a completely lag free environment. To my surprise, MK's first online outing is almost flawless and has very user-friendly features. It's easy to find matches, it's easy to accept opponents after viewing their stat-card and you can easily select yes or no to challenge the same player when a match ends. Everything is extremely user-friendly and, from my experience, there's absolutely no lag at all, as the game won't put you in a match with inadequate connections. Unfortunately sometimes the game drops out if connections start to fail and you do get a disconnect against you if it happens. In fact, if somebody else leaves during a match it's also counted against you, which kind of ruins the whole point of having a disconnect record, but oh well, it's one problem that's not too major.

To make the online mode better, you can also play Puzzle and Chess Kombat with all of their features; the only thing that could improve the online aspect is if there were some sort of tournaments, or a mode in which 8 players could join a server and take turns battling it out, where the winner stays in until he loses. Ah well, there's always next time, and this is a fantastic first step in taking Mortal Kombat online; flawless even.

Deception's graphics aren't a vast improvement over Deadly Alliance's but they are still very, very good; when you're in battle at least. The Konquest graphics end up making many of the non=player characters around villages look primitive and lacking but once you get into actual battle the details on the outfits and sceneries are outstanding - everything is very atmospheric. The menus are great and much better than Deadly Alliance, making for a great overall presentation.

If you've played MK in the past you'll know it has a very distinct sound and thankfully that hasn't changed one bit, right down to Liu Kang's turkey gobble mating call when he does his bicycle kick, courtesy of Ed Boon himself. The signature phrases of the series all return but unfortunately the vocals within Konquest mode are very wooden and feature absolutely no conjunctions whatsoever, I guess in order to feel authentic but they come out very dull with only a few exceptions. Aside from the voice work, the sound overall is very satisfying and reminiscent of MK's classic sound and music. Speaking of music, each level not only comes with its own soundtrack but you can also unlock a large amount of tracks in the Krypt for your listening pleasure. Whilst it may not sound like a big deal, some of the tracks are quite good and all fit the mood and atmosphere of the arenas superbly and make a great addition to MK's already amazing line of secrets.

Small problems exist within the game but they're just minor gripes. Many players will certainly not like the MK style and consider a lot of moves, combos and attacks to be "cheap". One thing I personally don't like is the way Konquest sets up the battles; many of them have some sort of ridiculous stipulation applied to them, such as your character slowly losing life (bleeding from an unknown wound) while your enemy regenerates health... oh, and you have to do it within 30 seconds without blocking. Instead of just making the challenges hard and applying smart AI, we get frustrating, nonsense stipulations.

I would love to score Mortal Kombat: Deception a 10, as I've been a huge Mortal Kombat fan since day one and think that the MK universe has the best fighting game story, as well as the greatest and most memorable characters. The engine is superb and really brings back memories of the old 2D games; in fact the whole game is very nostalgic and is worth getting for any Mortal Kombat fan, old or new. Whilst Deception is much better than Deadly Alliance and the inclusion of online play is done flawlessly and is great fun, the main single player attraction is just so dumbed-down and chore-like that it's not a whole lot of fun and I couldn't imagine ever going through it again. And that's what really stops this game at the 9 mark. Players who can't play online and who don't have gamer friends probably won't get a lot out of this once they unlock everything and really couldn't even be bothered to do that; however, multiplayer and online buffs will eat it all right up and keep coming back for more. Welcome back to glory, Mortal Kombat!

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).